Typically, as used within pneumatically powered or combustion-powered nail-driving tools, wire nails having D-shaped or variant heads are collated by means of adhesively applied tapes or other collating media so as to form a strip. The shanks of the collated nails are oriented in a closely spaced, parallel relationship with respect to one another and, except at one end of the strip, the head of each nail overlies the head of another nail.
Various strips of collated wire nails having D-shaped heads are exemplified in Lingle U.S. Pat. No. 3,152,334, Leistner U.S. Pat. No. 3,861,526, and Shelton et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,966,042. Powers U.S. Pat. No. 3,359,582 discloses a die assembly for making a wire nail having such a head. Similar strips of collated wire nails having variant heads are exemplified in Juilfs U.S. Pat. No. 2,940,081 and Becht U.S. Pat. No. 3,481,459. None of the D-shaped or variant heads disclosed in the foregoing patents defines a complete circle when viewed axially.
In a known machine for collating wire nails, the nails are conveyed into a zone where adhesively applied tapes or other collating media are applied, by means of two endless bands having pockets holding the nail shanks. The endless bands are similar to bandsaw blades. The nail shanks are held in a closely spaced, parallel relationship with respect to one another and the nail tips tend to be generally aligned with one another, within a plane defined by means of the shank axes.
Desirably, the nail heads are oriented similarly and precisely, and the nail tips are aligned precisely with one another. In actual practice, it is difficult to orient the nails precisely in a rotational sense and in an axial sense when collating the nails. If a nail is not oriented precisely within a strip of collated nails, and if the strip is fed to a pneumatically powered or combustion-powered nail-driving tool, the nail may be damaged when driven. Furthermore, the tool and other nails within the strip may also be damaged.
A strip of collated wire nails wherein each nail has a novel configuration including a radially offset, circular head and a shank having a keyway, among other features, is disclosed in a copending application filed simultaneously herewith, under Ser. No. 597,025, and assigned commonly herewith. The copending application is entitled "Wire Nail, Strip of Collated Wire Nails, and Related Apparatus."
This invention makes advantageous use of the keyways of such nails so as to provide a novel combination of mechanisms within a machine for collating such nails and to provide a novel method for collating such nails.